This Week In The Laboratories Of Democracy

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Welcome back to our weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where the sign on the window says, "Lonely."

Let's begin in Georgia, capital of the New South, and the place Too Busy To Hate, but always able to find time to be dumb and heartless.

"But say you're going along and you have a wreck. And it's your fault. Well, a pre-existing condition would be you then calling up your insurance agent and saying, 'I would like to get collision insurance coverage on my car.' And your insurance agent says, 'Well, you never had that before. Why would you want it now?' And you say, 'Well, I just had a wreck, it was my fault and I want the insurance company to pay to repair my car.' And that's the exact same thing on pre-existing insurance."

So, some kid with, say, cystic fibrosis is responsible for an accidental collision of genes at some intersection back in the primordial soup, and the kid's just out of luck. Should've looked both ways before having parents, I guess. The only thing dumber than Ralph Hudgens is the idea that a state should elect its insurance commissioner.

The blog is accepting entries for the best joke concerning this really stupid idea. All entries must contain the phrases, "Washington," "US Capitol," "hazardous waste," and "House of Representatives."

Justice Marvin R. Baxter, who also owned Wells Fargo stock, recused himself; Werdegar did not. A court spokesman told the Center for Public Integrity that Werdegar "regrets the error" and the court has pledged to review its internal conflicts-of-interest procedures. The report notes 14 recent instances of state justices participated in cases in which they or their spouses owned stock in companies involved in the litigation. But, it points out, the conflict of interest was only detectable because California is one of a very small number of states with robust financial disclosure for their state judiciaries.

She regrets the error. Wells Fargo, on the other hand, remains overjoyed by it.

Hopscotching the continent, we should check in with Paul LePage, the human bowling-jacket serving as the governor of Maine. Paul LePage behaves in office like Chris Christie's inner child. He finds poor people -- and people who are not Paul LePage -- a nuisance and would prefer ot to be bothered with them. And, as always, LePage and the people who work for him, who apparently took their gigs because they're too proud to roll tourists at Old Orchard beach, aren't even trying very hard at concocting alibis.

The state picked the new location in part because it is accessible by bus. However, the bus route consists of 72 stops from downtown Portland and can take up to 80 minutes round trip. Additionally, the trip would cost $3 round trip, a hardship for many recipients already on food stamps or subsidized housing. While LePage's administration argues that the new location will be more accessible for the two-thirds of recipients in Cumberland County who live outside of downtown Portland, opponents of the plan dismissed that argument. Anyone seeking services without a car would need to bus into Portland before beginning the 80 minute trek.

Luckily, though, Maine's poors aren't wards of the state in Arizona, where national derpcloud Jan Brewer is governing still, and abused kids kind of, well, get lost in the system, or in the desert wilds, or some place.

Clarence Carter, director of the Department of Economic Security, which oversees CPS, revealed last week that more than 6,000 reports generated by the state's child abuse hotline hadn't been investigated since 2009, most in the past 20 months. The CPS plan to clear those reports was released early this week has been widely panned as inadequate and short on specifics.

Off now, because, apparently, nobody in Arizona is watching anybody else in Arizona, to Oklahoma, where Special Blog Abandoned Gas Station Inspector Friedman Of The Plains passes along the news that the gang in the Oklahoma legislature would like to redefine "ethics" in a way that ensures that they don't, you know, starve or anything.

Under current rules, a lobbyist is limited to giving a legislator $100 worth of meals and gifts, but there are more than a dozen exclusions. The new rule would increase the limit to $500, and eliminate the exclusions. The change is opposed by the public watchdog group Common Cause, whose chairman says he's concerned about the growing ability of lobbyists to "wine and dine" policymakers.

There is absolutely nothing that can go wrong with this plan. As long as the lobbyists keep track of their receipts. For the legislators, I mean.

And we conclude in Illinois, where the latest chapter of The Great Renege took place.

The top leaders of both legislative houses, Democrats and Republicans, had cobbled together the bill and pushed strenuously for its passage, supported by the state Chamber of Commerce and the Illinois Farm Bureau. Union leaders and some Democratic lawmakers opposed it, just as strenuously, arguing that the bill fell too harshly on state workers who had paid into their pension plans over the years with the understanding that the benefits would be there when they retired.

Suckers.

The break in the negotiations came last week when the Democratic and Republican leaders in the legislature ended months of wrangling and agreed on a plan that they said would save $160 billion and erase the state's pension debt by 2044.